Travel: A Poem

The birds that traverse the garden –
Emerging to sight above the hedge,
The silvery magnolia tree, the rose
Branches splayed against the sky –
From east and west, the north – rising
And dipping above the lawn,
In light waves of flight: these
Arise within me. They are thoughts.

They are not my thoughts, but they
Come, picked out in the sun, to travel
Through me. There is no division
In this spring daylight, in my mind now,
Between these and these: they pass
As one, beneath a sky of utmost clarity,
Above leaves of perfect stillness,
In the freshness of a quiet Sunday.

So the division ends, and I incorporate
This life – the gleaming, dewy lawn,
The sparrows, a pair of blackbirds, and
The hesitant morning warmth – in feeling
Or in intellect, in the embrace
Of participation, sense of common life,
In which time is the least movement
In me, in this world of blue and green.

I say the birds travel through me, but
It is me that moves – in easy mastery
Of the air – within them. My mind is
Theirs, and not of these birds
Only, for it belongs as much
To the shrouded buds, glistening
Thorns, the spiders and their webs
Glittering in their still, flimsy brilliance.

I do not exist, except as part of
The morning now. And I will not
Exist but for the continuing mystery
Of flight – within me and without –
In the momentary equilibrium of mind
And air, between the shadows
This direction, and the sunlight there,
In travel, half pulling and half afloat.

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